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Review
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What to say about Paul Oakenfold? He's the superstarriest of superstar DJs, all James Bond cool and evangelical zeal. The consummate show/salesman, his stature and relevance are unquestionable.
But this is the tricky domain of the "artist album," where despite slavish obsessions to the DJ, it's all about production skills. You can rock parties from here to Singapore, but to play with the big boys you have to rock the recording studio. And even that's gotten more competitive, as it takes more than simple dance tracks to cut the mustard anymore. Just look at Timo Maas — already a world-renown DJ/remixer on the rise, his stock has gone through the roof thanks to the diversity and strength of his artist album, Loud. Combining '80s dance-pop with the throb of super-club dance floors, it's bound to grace many year-end best-of lists. So yeah, the bar's set pretty high for our Oakey.
As such, he's stacked the deck on Bunkka, front-loading it with glossy cameos from the likes of Nelly Furtado, Perry Farrell and Ice Cube. And that's just the beginning. Opening with the 1997-issue big-beat(!) thump of "Ready Steady Go" (which is just begging to soundtrack a sports car commercial), Bunkka has the savvy and brass tacks to challenge even the Jedi master of music/marketing synergy, Moby. Songs like the shiny synth-popped "Southern Sun" bop along like Sarah Maclachlan if she were 10 years younger, single and looking to kick Enya's ass. We're talking serious business here.
The beats get suspiciously big again on the Perry Farrell-powered "Time of Your Life," which finds Farrell holding his banshee wail in check (for the most part) to sound like Richard Ashcroft aping Johnny Lydon over a wash of acid bleeps and ray-gun blips. Interesting.
Things calm down considerably with "Hypnotised," a wholesale trance epic edited down to a tidy six-and-a-half minutes, followed by the moody atmospherics of "Zoo York," another grand landscape of sweeping strings and massively attacked dramatics. Hmmm.
Meandering spoken-word histrionics from Hunter S. Thompson (complete with a phone message from his assistant) earmark the stark interlude "Nixon's Spirit" before Emiliana Torrini will have listeners thinking it's Björk chirping on the down-shifted breakbeat requiem "Hold Your Hand." Crafty.
When Oakey deigns to crack a smile on the beatific "Starry Eyed Surprise" with Crazy Town's Shifty Shellshock on the mic (the catchiest follow-up to "Butterfly" that Crazy Town wish they'd thought of), Bunkka starts to sound like it's finally having some bona fide fun. Ice Cube talks that ol' gangsta shit on the routine "Get 'Em Up" before Grant Lee Phillips does Bono to an electro beat on "Motion," setting the stage for the big finish. That's when find Nelly Furtado cast as the divine angel to Tricky's psychotic devil in a swirling ocean of blazing pianos and orchestral chaos for "The Harder They Come." Heavy.
Listening to Bunkka (and what's with that title anyway?), it sounds like Oakenfold's only a strong promotional campaign away from Billboard chartings, MTV spots and Grammy nominations. Happy days are here again. REVEWER: Scott Sterling -- From URB Magazine\n \n
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